Children born to fathers older than 45 years have a heightened risk of developing a range of conditions, from autism to addiction, according to a large Swedish study published 1 April in JAMA Psychiatry.

Some children diagnosed with autism may fall into distinct subgroups based on their symptoms and other diagnoses, researchers report in the January issue of Pediatrics.

Men who have an extra X chromosome have an elevated risk of developing autism, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Mice with a duplication of SHANK3, a gene with strong links to autism, are hyperactive and manic, reports a study published 7 November in Nature.
 

It’s common for children with autism to take more than one medication to improve symptoms, despite the dearth of information about the drugs’ long-term safety, according to two new studies.

Researchers have mined the medical records of more than 100 million people and found close to 3,000 associations between single-gene diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, and complex genetic disorders such as autism. The results were published 26 September in Cell.

Clinicians should place children under age 5 who have developmental delay into a broad diagnostic category, called ESSENCE, which may then resolve into any number of individual diagnoses over time, says Christopher Gillberg. 

More of the common variants implicated in schizophrenia are also linked to bipolar disorder than to autism, according to a study published 28 August in Nature Genetics.

Despite a sizable overlap in symptoms and medications, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia each has a defining signature. The findings are based on an analysis of electronic medical records from California hospitals, published 16 August.

As much as 30 percent of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder may also have autism, suggests a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.